I’m not always a fan of remasters, as sometimes the record in question is truly a record of a moment in time, but in this case I needed to revisit that moment and reclaim the music from it.

abendromen arrived in the evening hours of December 2015 and January 2016. My life had gone sideways and I had to leave the relationship I was in and the house I had been living in. 

In hindsight I was amazingly fortunate to have a place to land... the large mostly unused space adjacent to the studio became my home for several years.

That winter I was very lost, and very alone. Time became a little bit suspended for me, and I found myself returning every night to the piano that had comforted me, and in many ways spoken for me, through my twenties. The piano became my confidant and I poured my inner turmoil into it... sadness, loss, fear, anger, in search of some kind of peace. In a month of midnight sessions abendromen was born, not out of intention, but out of necessity. 

Earlier, in the fall of 2015, ambient guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Pearce had turned me on to an excellent software piano, and Matt Picone at Fractal Audio had provided me with a device that turned my electric guitar into swirls of color and texture. These two tools were the genesis of my rebirth as a musician. It had been 25 years since I made a record of my own music. I didn't think I'd ever do it again.

In fact I never intended to release the album. I sent it to Jeff Pearce to break my hold on it and he suggested I release it. I had made it because I had to and in that sense it had already served its purpose for me, but he suggested to me that it might have a life in the outside world. I sent it to Tim Story, whose influence on me can’t really be overstated, to make sure I wasn’t treading too close to his world and he also encouraged me to put it out.

So I did. And my life started to change.

In the seven years since I made the record I’ve become a happier person, found some balance, rediscovered my connection to nature, and made a life and home with Sarah that is beyond what I thought possible.

I listened to abendromen earlier this year and heard the choices made by an old me... most dramatically I heard the heavy heart of a person who couldn’t see any of the potential joy in what he was creating. I wanted to free the music from the trap of who I was and what I was going through at the time I made it. So I approached the album with today’s eyes and ears, and, with some compassion for the guy who made it, steered it in a slightly different direction.

I so enjoyed making my Snapshots solo piano album that I thought it would be interesting to take a few of the pieces from abendromen back to their piano roots. I chose three songs that seemed to stand well as solo piano pieces and added them as bonus tracks at the end of the remastered album.

I also discovered a piece I had left on the proverbial cutting room floor from that dark month. I had no recollection of making it, but it was nearly done and clearly from the same set of emotions that drove the rest of the album. I tidied it up a little and added it to the album as well. It’s called “The Frozen River” and it’s the last track on the remaster.

The original album will still exist; I’ll keep it on Bandcamp as a journal entry of who I was at the time. The remaster, I hope, opens up the doors a little... allows a little light in.